ORION System Virginia

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SWARD

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Oct 19, 2003
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Gloucester Point. Virginia
I live in Gloucester County Virginia and I am close to the ORION tower in James City County system. My Pro 96 will not program the only control channel on this system. My question is to the tide water ORION Virginia monitors. I see many of the fire departments down here are on the system. My question is do they broadcast there operations on the ORION system or only use it during a mutual aid event. I see this as an opportunity to monitor lots of traffic on one system. I do not see a reason to upgrade if not……. However a new toy is always nice.
Thanks in advance.
 

LeSueurC

IBEW Local 50
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Nov 6, 2014
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James City Co, VA
They usually use them for mutual aid events, but it doesn't hurt to program in all the TG's, for example the Incident command channels and the Ops channels also the VDOT Smart traffic channel
 

kc4jgc

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Mar 7, 2004
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Virginia Beach, VA
By name, ORION is a regional interoperability network. No, you won't hear routine FD dispatches or fireground activity.There are some agencies that use the system for their primary comms though. You'll also hear some interesting activity from time to time that I won't disclose here. The last couple years several talk groups had been active during Harborfest. If you go to the Ready Hampton Roads website, you'll find 3 links to youtube for training videos on how ORION is to be used.

HTH,
 

SWARD

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Joined
Oct 19, 2003
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26
Location
Gloucester Point. Virginia
ORION

Ok I understand that VA beach use the system as a primary communications, I think? Is this a 3rd party system and it is use per pay system? Is this something we are moving to?
 

kc4jgc

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Mar 7, 2004
Messages
1,546
Location
Virginia Beach, VA
Ok I understand that VA beach use the system as a primary communications,
Because VB is on 800MHz, it is (as far as our scanners are concerned) a separate system. You won't hear VB in Gloucester under normal propagation conditions. The main ORION system is on 700MHz and has at least 5 tower sites throughout the region.
 
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